merry clinking of champagne-glasses, the glare of electric lights, with
the ravishing music of an Hungarian gypsy band on our right, and a band
of swarthy Servians playing their sweet native melodies on our left, we,
among other toasts, drink to the success of my tour. There is a cosmopolitan
and exceedingly interesting crowd of visitors at the international
exhibition: natives from Bulgaria, Servia, Roumania, and Turkey, in their
national costumes; and mingled among them are Hungarian peasants from
various provinces, some of them in a remarkably picturesque dress, that
I afterward learn is Croatian. A noticeable feature of Budapest, besides
a predilection for sport among the citizens, is a larger proportion of
handsome ladies than one sees in most European cities, and there is,
moreover, a certain atmosphere about them that makes them rather agreeable
company. If one is travelling around the world with a bicycle, it is not
at all inconsistent with Budapest propriety for the wife of the wheelman
sitting opposite you to remark that she wishes she were a rose, that you
might wear her for a button-hole bouquet on your journey, and to ask
whether or not, in that case, you would throw the rose away when it
faded. Compliments, pleasant, yet withal as meaningless as the coquettish
glances and fan-play that accompany them, are given with a freedom and
liberality that put the sterner native of more western countries at his
wits' end to return them. But the most delightful thing in all Hungary
is its gypsy music. As it is played here beneath its own sunny skies,
methinks there is nothing in the wide world to compare with it. The music
does not suit the taste of some people, however; it is too wild and
thrilling. Budapest is a place of many languages, one of the waiters in
the exhibition cafe claiming the ability to speak and understand no less
than fourteen different languages and dialects.

Nine wheelmen accompany me some distance out of Budapest on Monday
morning, and Mr. Philipovitz and two other members continue with Igali